The present invention pertains to winding machines, and in particular, to an automatic winding machine for winding electromechanical machine armatures.
Electromechanical machines such as motors are used in many applications, many of which require machines which are limited in size, yet which are capable of delivering a large amount of torque. Torque, which is the force, measure in foot pounds, exerted by a rotating shaft, is proportional to the amount of flux produced by the windings of a motor. This flux is, in turn, proportional to the cross-sectional area of the copper within the slots around the periphery of the motor's rotor. Thus, to provide a motor which is small in size, yet capable of delivering a large amount of torque, it is desirable to wind the motor's armature in a manner which maximizes slotfill, i.e., the percentage of the cross-sectional area of a slot that is filled with copper.
Machines for automatically winding armatures currently exist in the art. Such machines are typically complex in their mechanical operation and limited in the level of slotfill which they are capable of achieving. For example, one previous armature winding machine in the art requires 145 wire placing motions to wind an armature having 29 slots with five turns per coil. Similarly, the highest level of slotfill that has been achieved to date by a prior art automatic winding machine in winding a four pole winding is 45 percent slotfill.